Answering the question, "where are you," seems perfectly straightforward. It on the surface a question about location. However, location is not a straightforward as: I am here. Many of us own digital devices, services and applications that tell us where we are and where we should be going, or tell others where we say we are, or at least where might wish we were. In a world of GPS, 4-square, facebook places, checking in and google maps, how do we think about where we are? In this talk, Genevieve uses a series of ethnographic moments to challenge our notions of location, direction, and place to suggest some other ways of making sense of where we might be.

Genevieve Bell

Intel Corporation

Dr. Genevieve Bell is an Australian-born anthropologist and researcher. As director of User Interaction and Experience in Intel Labs, Bell leads a research team of social scientists, interaction designers, human factors engineers and computer scientists. This team shapes and helps create new Intel technologies and products that are increasingly designed around people's needs and desires. In this team and her prior roles, Bell has fundamentally altered the way Intel envisions and plans its future products so that they are centered on people's needs rather than simply silicon capabilities.

In addition to leading this increasingly important area of research at Intel, Bell is an accomplished industry pundit on the intersection of culture and technology. She is a regular public speaker and panelist at technology conferences worldwide, sharing myriad insights gained from her extensive international field work and research. Her first book, 'Divining the Digital Future: Mess and Mythology in Ubiquitous Computing,' was co-written with Prof. Paul Dourish of the University of California at Irvine and released in April 2011. In 2010, Bell was named one of Fast Company's inaugural '100 Most Creative People in Business.' She also is the recipient of several patents for consumer electronics innovations.

Moving to the United States for her undergraduate studies, she graduated from Bryn Mawr in 1990 with a bachelor's degree in anthropology. She then attended Stanford University, earning her master's degree (1993) and a doctorate (1998) in cultural anthropology, as well as acting as a lecturer in the Department of Anthropology from 1996-1998. With a father who was an engineer and a mother who was an anthropologist, perhaps Bell was fated to ultimately work for a technology company, joining Intel in 1998.